I know this has been done before, but not for a while and I've been wanting to climb it for ages. When i tried last year, it was too early in the night and there was some kind of street festival on. After a rained out night the previous day in Liverpool and with tonight's leads in Manchester turning into nothing, it was time to head to Salford in the hope that it would produce. Either I'm blind or there seems to be a lack of scaffolding in the cities at the moment. I quite enjoyed the views from up here, but it's very exposed and you are lit up like a Christmas tree. Not particularly happy with the shots, but it's been a while since i took some cityscape shots and it was quite windy!

History

Designed by Carlos Fernandez Casado, the bridge has a main span of 95 metres in a Lohse Arch, with the peaks of the twin arches connected at the crown. These brace one another, resulting in greater structural rigidity. The deck is connected to the arches with vertical members, which splay outwards at an increasing angle towards the centre of the span. The sweeping arches are decorated with coloured LED lighting, while the deck is illuminated with white downlighting. Pedestrians are protected from the prevailing winds by glass sides, coloured blue at foot level and tapering in, following the angle of the arches.

The lifting design utilises four white tubular steel space truss towers with concrete counterweights mounted internally on red carriers, although early plans envisioned spherical counterweights. These are suspended by cable over large grey wheels, mounted above decorative triangular maintenance platforms. The counterbalancing system allows the bridge to complete a raising or lowering through its 18 metre lift in less than three minutes. The outermost truss sections of each tower curve away from the main bridge at the base, tapering to a point, and each tower is topped with two decorative blue lights. The four towers have uplighting from the maintenance platform, although this feature has not been operational for some time.